Are Men the New Minority?

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In the spring of 2010, a group of academics gathered at Wagner College in Staten Island, N.Y., to propose a new field of research: “Male Studies.” Not to be confused with Men’s Studies, which has been around for more than two decades, Male Studies is founded on the premise that men are now disenfranchised, and women’s success has come at their expense.

Sound counterintuitive? It may be. But those backing the proposal have some solid statistics behind them. For starters, since 2000, women have represented about 57 percent of enrollment at colleges in the United States, they consistently outperform males in high school, and are now earning more Ph.D.s. “The academic lives of men are systemically discriminated against.” said Lionel Tiger, a professor at Rutgers who spoke at the Staten Island event. “If this were happening to any other group, it would be cause for outcry.”

Taken at face value, it sure seems like something’s wrong. But is it correct to assume that the imbalance indicates discrimination against men? Or is it the other way around? In 2006, Jennifer Delahunty Britz, an admissions dean at Ohio’s Kenyon College, caused a stir when she wrote an op-ed in The New York Times apologizing to female college applicants for routinely rejecting them in favor of their less-qualified male peers. “I was awash in molten reaction when it came out,” she says. “And I keep hearing about it four years later … I told the truth and struck a nerve, I guess.” Kenyon is far from alone: at Northwestern, the acceptance rate is 26 percent for women and 34 percent for men; and at the University of Richmond, the admissions rate for males is 13 percent higher than for females.

Prompted in part by Delahunty Britz’s piece, in the summer of 2009, Gail Heriot, a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, decided to launch a probe into whether such disparate acceptance rates amounted to discrimination against female applicants. The commission subpoenaed application and admissions information from 18 schools—despite considerable reluctance from some—and, so far, their results are inconclusive. “It was time to establish exactly what was going on,” Heriot says. “My fear is that we could have a collective action problem. When one school [admits men more easily], pretty soon they will all have to.” If the commission decides that it’s necessary, they will file a report to Congress, and it will be up to them to correct discriminatory practices.

But despite such probes into discrimination against women, it’s groups like those gathered at Wagner—who believe that it’s men who get the short stick—that are the most vocal about gender imbalance on campus. The folks at Wagner are quick to say that women are keeping mum because drawing attention to the issue would be tantamount to declaring victory for women’s rights. “They want to say the tables are turned—women now have the power, and men are victims,” says Rocco Capraro, an associate dean at Hobart College. “I’m saying, it’s a completely different paradigm. They are not the victims of oppression…you can’t use a paradigm of power as a way to explain low achievement.”

Sandy Baum, a senior policy analyst at the College Board, thinks the debate over affirmative action for male applicants misses the point entirely. She says that the practice of favoring men over women in admissions is limited to small, selective schools like Kenyon. Plus, she notes, schools look for a balance in every area: geographical location, athletes vs. musicians, race and ethnic background, and so on. “I’m not really worried that women are not going to get into college because some selective schools decide they need more men,” she says. “I haven’t seen anybody say, why are we discriminating against people from New York State? The real issue we should be considering is why is it that men have more trouble getting into schools.”

Pedro Noguera, a researcher at New York University’s Steinhardt School, says that in part, boys are stuck in a sort of culture lag. “It used to be that you didn’t need a college degree, now you do,” he says. “The tendency to underappreciate the importance of academic pursuit has been there for a long time but now the consequences of it are more severe.” With boys continuing to fall behind, and the recession claiming more men’s jobs than women’s, the subject has been getting increasing attention. But its sources and solutions remain hard to pin down. Leonard Sax, the author of Boys Adrift and Girls on the Edge, believes that the problem with boys is related to basic assumptions about gender, saying that boys increasingly think of academic success as unmasculine.

The problem, according to some, could stem from ideas and messages about what is and isn’t acceptable—what is and isn’t “manly.” In his recent book, Guyland, Michael Kimmel writes that, “men subscribe to these ideals not because they want to impress women … (but) because they want to be positively evaluated by other men.” Similarly, Alan Berkowitz theorizes that men try to act like “men” because they incorrectly think that other men expect them to. So what to do? At Hobart, Capraro has started a series of mandatory men’s groups on campus to address these very issues. Starting with a sexual-assault program in the 80s, the groups now include a men’s-health component, and, as of 2009, a session called “Masculinities,” which addresses the underlying question of “what does it mean to be a man and what messages do men get about healthy, unhealthy attitudes and behaviors?” He says that once his students are in a space where they can speak openly about expectations and definitions of masculinity, stereotypes begin to fall away, and they realize that some of those messages are destructive. Sax says that in a matter of days, he can help boys go from thinking that studying is uncool to staying up all night working on their homework.If there’s one thing that almost everyone agrees on, it’s that making sure that boys succeed in school does not have to come at the expense of girls—it’s not a zero-sum game. In fact, Sax calls the conflict between the Male Studies and Men’s Studies advocates an “ongoing and unproductive debate.” Noting that although girls might do better academically, they’re also more likely to experience very high stress levels, eating disorders, and cutting, he says, “Boys have problems. Girls have problems. Both are disadvantaged, but they’re disadvantaged in different ways.” Before we declare victory for either gender, it’s a message to bear in mind.